Outmatch
by trufflemores
Summary: 3.17 AU. Abra Kadabra escapes his cell.


A.K. enjoys being a ghost.

Like a poltergeist he haunts younger generations. He throws technology at them they can't hope to stop; he prophesies a future they can't possibly divert. He walks with an air of confidence begotten from more than two millennium of hindsight. He's immune to their sicknesses. He's genetically superior in every regard: he can hold more air in his lungs, slow his heartbeat to a marathoner's crawl, and capsize unwanted pains with effortless ease. He is a master of his own existence. To the people of the past, he is more powerful than they can adequately conceive, a threat they can't properly conceptualize.

He is a man of his society, more bionic than biotic. The nanotechnology that prolongs his lifespan to a robust six centuries also enables him to speak effortlessly with people whose native languages died out centuries ago. Everything about their culture exists solely in the textbooks of his time - not that those exist, either. Books are fascinating, but there's no need to pore over them, not when one can acquire any knowledge one so desires with nanotech. It's tedious to learn; it's far simpler to acquire and access the new knowledge solely when the situation demands it, reserving still-scarce gray matter for more important things. Like conversations: they're currency, worth their weight in titanium.

Taken in fullness, A.K.'s world does not look like theirs. _Before, there was darkness,_ the elders informed him when he was but ten years old. _Then we found a way to bring everything into light._ A blink can cast the room into ultraviolet light, infrared light, any wavelength he so desired. He can bring tiny details into arresting focus, zone out extraneous noise, and even balance multiple inputs simultaneously: listen to a conversationalist while watching both they and their companion. Simultaneously. He can perform complex calculations and rigorous physical tasks while keeping his attention zeroed entirely in on a different target. He can multitask - the nanotech which makes A.K. ensures it is all processed and filed and forgotten at once.

That's the trick: let nothing linger. Learn and forget in a trillionth of a second, storing everything in a conscious archive. Discard it until it's needed. Live exactly in the present, where the past does not exist, and the future is an abstraction without focus. The future is the next blink, a useless contemplation. Why worry about what the world will look like six seconds from now? Rumination won't change it. Focusing on the present means living as it is intended, biologically, before humans ever thought they could bring existence under control through reason.

They can't. Like animals, they stop thinking about what the next moment will bring. And they become a different species.

A.K. listens impassively to B.A., an amused smirk stuck on his face. They would put B.A. down in A.K.'s time. Metahumans and biotics were synonyms, but one was regulated, and the other was not, and that made metas dangerous. Metas were almost an extinct species, where A.K. came from; only a handful of anomalies held out on distant worlds.

Watching B.A., A.K. decides that it would be a kindness to kill him. He can see the heat signature of thousands of bruises, healed bones, and damaged organs, every injury thrown into sharp relief in his sight. He stares unblinking at B.A. for a disconcertingly long time, holding the image, fathoming the sheer amount of time that has been brutally sketched into his skin. He thinks about taking him back to the future and introducing him to those who would put him out of his suffering permanently and feels a twinge of almost compassion.

But he doesn't save the dead, and B.A. won't live to see the 24th century, let alone the 64th. Let him suffer his long, natural life. Let him live as the universe never intended: a mutant, a disease, a cancerous presence that may very well destroy this timeline. A.K. has seen plenty of others succumb; it won't matter. When ordinary humans developed super powers, the non-metas became bionic, and they conquered their mercurial multiverse: they laid down new rules and ensured that the multiverse would live on, no matter how many universes died.

 _You are the reason I exist,_ A.K. thinks, amused.

As a whole the past amuses him. The inhabitants don't share his humor, but he doesn't care. _None of you exist where I am from._

He simpers and puts on a good show of servility, luring them into a false sense of security. When they leave him alone, he waits an hour before he cuts the power, pries open the cell door, and takes destiny into his own hands. Closing his eyes, he lets himself dissociate completely, preserved in every individual particulate as the invisible cloud drifts from the outside of the cell door up to the Cortex.

Reassembling directly behind B.A., he gets a hand around the back of his neck, tight enough to convey a threat but not painful. Yet.

In a second, J.W. has a gun pointed at him. A.K. rolls his eyes and shakes down his sleeve. Blinking once to reset his focus, he identifies his dissolver. With his thumb, he breaks the seal and uses an open palm to aim, like a cobra casting its venom. The acid finds its target and instantly reduces the bullets to a stream of water. _Any technology, sufficiently advanced, is indistinguishable from magic._ A.K. smiles wolfishly as J.W. gapes at his gun. The tactic is alchemical, sinfully unfair. A.K. loves it.

He tightens his grip on the speedster's neck and feels the beginning strains of a fracture forming. It's a biology lesson: how much pressure does it take to snap a human neck? About twelve hundred pounds per square inch.

A.K. can exert four times that much, almost ten with the right steroids.

He could snap a crocodile in half. A non-bionic doesn't stand a chance.

He lets the C.R.s attempt to blast him off his feet and shields by disassembling, maintaining his general shape but easily diverting the sound waves. They're really trying, and he respects that, but like ants in a farm they're miniscule, and ill-equipped to fight the giant in their midst. He presses harder, feeling B.A. clawing at his arm, and he kicks a leg out from underneath him.

 _I hate when they struggle_. A.K. has always prided himself on being a humanitarian: he is kind when he could be cruel, putting creatures out of their misery quickly. _Get it over with_ , he thinks, and twists his hand a fraction of an inch before a freight train slams into him.

Staggering, he finds his footing in time to dissolve before W.W. can get in a second strike. In his unstoppable haste, W.W. plows into B.A. and they hit a wall together. A.K. rolls his eyes. "Nice move," he congratulates dryly, dissolving when he feels an energy pulse approaching behind him and letting it pass harmlessly through him. He disappears entirely and surges forward, striking hard and fast, a well-timed shot taking out W.W. He'll live, A.K. thinks, but he'll have a hell of a shiner.

Another bruise to the collection, he muses. W.W. could use a few more for his trouble.

He recoils when a sound blast hits him hard, shattering his focus, nanotech screaming. Gritting his teeth, he reaches up to press the mute on his ears, but the sound keeps rattling in his bones, _too loud_ , and he's snarling and turning wildly to face it, vision absolutely haywire. What the _hell_ is that? he wonders, and catches a glimpse in the fractured darkness of the male C.R. holding up a metal gloved hand. He cranks it up and A.K.'s system collapses, leaving him dark and deaf and frozen, consciousness scattering.

In the half-second before release, he feels a firm hand on the back of his neck, and then he's shoved forward into the temporal tide. From the storm, a shadow steps forward between flashes of lightning. A.K. cringes. Dropping to a knee, he averts his gaze.

The Black Flash pauses right in front of him, leaning in until A.K. can't avoid its poisonous breath. He holds his own. _A.K.,_ it says.

A.K. keeps his gaze on the ground. _Elder_.

 _You take what isn't yours._

A.K. swallows hard and flinches when a hand extends towards him.

 _My turn._

In the Speed Force, no one can hear him scream. And no one knows what happens to one-in-ten-billion A.K.'s.

. o .

With bloody claws, The Black Flash greets Barry in the Speed Force.

Meeting its gaze dead-on, Barry says, "I'm sorry."

The Black Flash reaches out and Barry doesn't flinch when it scrapes a claw across his throat. He won't bleed out here. But it is a message, and it will leave a scar. Retracting its claw, The Black Flash dismisses, _He wasn't yours_.

Barry blinks and he's back in the Cortex, a groaning Wally resurrecting beside him. His leg is on fire - Abra Kadabra almost broke it, and a halting gasp of pain escapes him as the adrenaline fades - but he focuses on Cisco and manages, "Thank you."

"For throwing him or you into the Speed Force?" Cisco asks, exhaling hard.

Barry grimaces as he pulls himself to his feet. His left leg won't take on weight; he puts a hand on the wall to steady himself. "Both." Looking down at Wally, he adds, "You good?"

Wally presses his hands against his eyes and groans instead.

"Yeah," Barry agrees, wincing when Joe gets an arm under his shoulders and helps him limp over to a table. "He's gone," he tells them, thinking about those red claws.

Cindy folds her arms across her chest, holding her silence for a long moment. "Justice was served," she says at last, and she seems almost satisfied. Barry knows there's a deeper story there - that there was something personal here - but he's too sore to ask.

He can almost feel the Speed Force growling under his skin, a satisfied savagery that knows deeper roots than even Abra Kadabra's 64th century origin can claim.

Caitlin crouches in front of Wally, asking him to follow a penlight, and Joe lets him go with a slight shake of his shoulder, attaboy. Unexpectedly, Cindy sits next to him.

She reaches out and puts a hand on his wrist and he can almost feel her reading his mind, or maybe just replaying it, releasing him less than a second later with a deep exhale.

"Thank you," she says quietly, him only.

Barry dips his head in a shallow nod.

He can still feel the claw scraping across his throat, a warning. _I don't work for you,_ it says. _Don't push it._

If there's one thing he's learned from Abra Kadabra, it's "don't overreach."

 _I won't,_ he tells no one.

In the Speed Force, No One nods.


End file.
